Lyons: Knight-DiPino talk must have been interesting

It would be illegal, and wrong, and I might have to move to Ecuador if I had done it.

So I wouldn’t have, even if I could.

But I still half-wish I had secretly bugged the private, face-to-face, closed-door meeting on Wednesday between Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight and Sarasota Police Chief Bernadette DiPino.

I’d like to hear what they said and — better — how they said it.

Did teeth grind? Did either brandish a Taser?

Knight and DiPino agreed not to tell much, and they didn’t when I asked, aside from swearing to a sunny outcome: The talk allowed them to work through potential hard feelings, and they and their agencies now plan to work together in harmony and enthusiastic cooperation to fight crime.

Criminals, look out!

I hope so. And I hope Knight means it that, when he so publicly blasted city police leadership, he never had any thought or desire about what it appeared he was thinking and desiring.

That is, he has no designs on adding the Sarasota Police Department territory to the sheriff’s turf.

In case you missed it, this started when Knight publicly painted DiPino as ineptly leading a team of clueless slackers ignoring a blatant violent crime trend in Newtown, one that involves very-late-night, out-of-county gangbangers who come from Manatee County to take advantage of North Sarasota’s alleged reputation as a cop-free zone.

Knight had pretty much said the obvious solution was to put himself, with his proven crime-stopping leadership, in charge of policing the city along with the county.

Take that, new police chief!

Well, gosh. DiPino has been here all of six months. This isn’t the first time parts of Newtown had a spike in shootings and related troubles, and the current one started on the watch of Chief Mikel Holloway, a local law enforcement veteran Knight speaks of highly and calls their relationship “terrific.”

So Knight’s public assault on SPD leadership seemed unprecedented and out of the blue, not to mention oddly emotional and somewhat over the top.

Unless Knight was totally right, that is, and there is a growing problem SPD has been royally botching into a major crises, causing Knight’s deputies to be called in frequently to bail out hapless and leaderless SPD officers.

DiPino says that’s just not fair or accurate. There have been crowd problems and shootings in the city that Knight’s deputies helped with, of course. But officers of both agencies, and others, back each other up as needed.

After all, city cops assisted deputies more than 700 times in the past year, the chief told me.

As far as she knew before Knight’s verbal assault, she and he had a normal inter-agency relationship with occasional meetings, good communication and no particular issues.

“I thought things were good,” DiPino told me. She assumed if Knight had a problem or a suggestion, he would just talk to her, as is normal and expected. So she was amazed that the first she knew of his alleged alarm about SPD was when he went off at a County Commission meeting and claimed his deputies were saving her cops’ bacon all the time.

“I was very surprised,” DiPino said. “I was blindsided.”

DiPino is about nothing if not communication. It’s what she preaches. She wants every cop to talk with everyone on the beat. She thinks everyone should get to know each other. So, I don’t get it.

I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me what she was tempted to say to Knight at their meeting, or whether she gave in at all to that temptation. She says she knew they needed to get on track to work together, so that became her only aim.

According to both, it worked. They will be teaming up now. No one is mad, officially, even if working a bit at letting it all be water under the bridge.

Knight says he knows his behavior wasn’t typical of him.

“Rarely do I go public with dissatisfactions,” the sheriff said. But he said repeated attempts by his office to share intelligence and important tips — about gang members coming from Manatee to Sarasota to target someone or other preventable crimes — was being handled with a casual “Thanks, we’ll handle it” response and no major action until after the violence erupted.

It it is a good thing he spoke out as he did, he insists.

“It worked. She came to the table,” and they really worked it out. Now, “I’m optimistic,” Knight said. “Very optimistic.”

Was this really just a half-cocked and now-denied effort to lay groundwork for a consolidation push?

I don’t know, but I’ve always preferred that consolidation not happen. I like that the two agencies must work together in many ways and can’t help but keep an eye on each other. Neither wants to be the slouch, so there is usually friendly competition, too.

It is a matter of opinion which agency usually does better work. Both have had serious management and morale and operational problems at times, and had to recover from them.

At those times, the more stable agency’s presence has seemed like a good thing.

Knight is entitled to his opinion about whether his agency is now the one with obviously better management, but a sheriff making that aggressive boast so loudly and unexpectedly, and with so little proof, did nothing to make it sound convincing.